from the time-for-some-answers dept

These days, Laura Poitras is known as the Oscar-winning director of the Ed Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR, and with it, one of the reporters who helped break Snowden's story in the first place. Pre-Snowden, she was a not-as-widely-known-but-still-celebrated documentary filmmaker, who also got some attention after her future colleague Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about how she was detained at the border every time she flew into the country (which was frequently, as she had made a documentary, My Country, My Country, concerning the Iraq War, along with The Oath, which reported on two Yemenis who had worked with Osama bin Laden). As Greenwald wrote back in 2012:

But Poitras’ work has been hampered, and continues to be hampered, by the constant harassment, invasive searches, and intimidation tactics to which she is routinely subjected whenever she re-enters her own country. Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.

She has had her laptop, camera and cellphone seized, and not returned for weeks, with the contents presumably copied. On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship. Her credit cards and receipts have been copied on numerous occasions. In many instances, DHS agents also detain and interrogate her in the foreign airport before her return, on one trip telling her that she would be barred from boarding her flight back home, only to let her board at the last minute. When she arrived at JFK Airport on Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, she was told by one DHS agent — after she asserted her privileges as a journalist to refuse to answer questions about the individuals with whom she met on her trip — that he “finds it very suspicious that you’re not willing to help your country by answering our questions.” They sometimes keep her detained for three to four hours (all while telling her that she will be released more quickly if she answers all their questions and consents to full searches).

It wasn't only at the border that she was subject to such searches. Often, even when flying domestically within the US, she was called out for further scrutiny and searches.

After Greenwald's article, a bunch of documentary filmmakers signed a petition protesting the treatment of Poitras, and between the press coverage and the petition, the harassment of Poitras suddenly stopped.

After this, she filed some FOIA requests to find out why she had been supposedly given a high threat rating in the DHS database, causing such detentions. Not surprisingly, the government refused to reveal any such information. And that brings us to the latest, where Poitras, with help from the EFF, has now sued the US government (specifically the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice) to get them to reveal why she was considered a threat.

As the filing itself explains, Poitras filed FOIA requests with basically every part of the government that might have information on her detentions, and basically got nothing in response from any of them, either by mostly ignoring the requests or rejecting them.

As the lawsuit also notes, Poitras took detailed records of her detentions (when she could -- in at least one instance she was denied the use of a pen to take notes after being told she might use it as a weapon). And the lawsuit includes some detailed descriptions. Here's just a snippet from a much longer list.

On or around August 22, 2006, while traveling from Sarajevo, the capital of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, to John F. Kennedy International Airport (“JFK”) in New York City
after attending the Sarajevo Film Festival, Plaintiff was paged to security while transiting
through the Vienna International Airport in Vienna, Austria. Plaintiff was thereafter taken into a
van and driven to a security inspection area. All of Plaintiff’s bags were searched and xrayed.
The head of airport security at the Vienna International Airport told Plaintiff that her
“Threat Score” was 400 out of 400 points. Plaintiff was eventually allowed to board a plane to
the United States. Upon her arrival at JFK, CBP agents again met her at the gate. Plaintiff was
thereafter escorted to a holding room, where she was detained and questioned for roughly two (2)
hours, and where her bags were searched for a second time, before being allowed to enter the
United States.

On or around November 26, 2006, while traveling from
Paris, France to Newark
on her way home from a vacation, Plaintiff was met by boarder agents upon her arrival at
Newark. She was detained and questioned for 30 minutes.

On or around December 17, 2006, while traveling from Dubai, United Arab
Emirates to JFK after attending the Dubai Film Festival, Plaintiff was met by border agents upon
her arrival at JFK. She was again detained and questioned before being allowed entry into the
United States. The CBP agents asked Plaintiff when she had last been to Atlanta, Georgia and
told her that she had a criminal record, despite that she had never been arrested.

Unfortunately, the courts have been pretty deferential to the government concerning things like the "no fly" list and the terrorist database, which means this lawsuit might be a long shot. However, one hopes that a judge will see both the clear ridiculousness of the treatment and the rather obvious fact that it was designed to intimidate Poitras and chill her First Amendment rights, and consider forcing the government into releasing these documents.

from the oh-really? dept

Stephen Hayes, who is the official biographer of former Vice President Dick Cheney and who also authored an entire book promoting dubious claims that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a close working relationship, is the sort of person who basically seems to support nearly all of our government's excesses in the supposed "war on terror." So, as some people noted, there seems to be a bit of irony in the fact that he has ended up on the DHS Terrorist Watchlist.

As we've discussed, the recently leaked guidelines about how you get on the watchlist shows that it's incredibly (and ridiculously) vague. It can be summed up as "someone at DHS thinks you did anything that might possibly be suspect, so onto the watchlist you go." That's why nearly half of the people on the list have no actual terrorist affiliation.

As for how Hayes ended up on the list, he claims it's because he recently booked a one-way flight to Istanbul for a cruise, returning to the US from Athens a few weeks later. Indeed, that seems likely. Marcy Wheeler has been pointing out for a while that one of the criteria to be put on the watchlist is merely "travel... to a locus of TERRORIST ACTIVITY" and apparently Istanbul counts.

In fact, Spencer Ackerman, at the Guardian, actually got US officials to quietly admit that those reports you've heard of 100 Americans "fighting for ISIS" is an almost entirely bogus claim based entirely on Americans who "travelled to Syria or attempted to travel to Syria over the past 18 months." In other words, if you're an American and you happened to travel to or near Syria, the US government claims you're fighting for ISIS -- even if, say, you went to provide humanitarian aid or to fight against ISIS. The US government doesn't care. Onto the "terrorist" list you go.

Speaking of not caring, when asked about Hayes being placed on the watchlist, Senator Harry Reid's long-time spokesperson (who previously worked for Senator Ted Kennedy) gave a "who cares?" response:

I have no idea and frankly don't really care why [a] Bush/Cheney apologist ended up on a TSA watch list -- Senator Kennedy was on a list as well

That is... an absolutely ridiculous response, and shows just how out of touch those in power have become. The proper response is that if people like both Stephen Hayes and Ted Kennedy are ending up on a terrorist watchlist something is seriously screwed up with that list and the process to get people on the list. Besides, isn't it a little disturbing that a person in power on one side of the traditional political spectrum shrugs off the government putting someone at the other end of that spectrum on a terrorist watchlist?

No one's legitimately worried about any harm done to Hayes for being on that list. He's going through the motions to get off the list, which I'm sure will work out just fine. Because he's white and a person of some influence with connections to famous politicians. But, as we've covered, if you happen to be Muslim, and happen to be put on the list it's nearly impossible to get off. Even if you're politically connected, being Muslim means that you can be put on a watchlist here in the US.

At some point you have to ask what is the point of all of this. It doesn't seem to be about making us any safer.

from the incredible dept

Ars Technica's Cyrus Farivar filed a FOIA request for the Passenger Name Records (PNRs) that had been stored by the federal government concerning his own travel history. PNRs are created by travel companies (airlines, hotels, cruise lines) whenever you book a reservation, and are then handed over to the government. After an appeal, Customs and Border Patrol turned over the records, showing that airlines (1) record a ton of information about you every time you book a flight and (2) hand over all that information to the government. Bizarrely, this includes the credit card number and IP address you used to book your travel, and it appears that the airlines and the US government are ignoring the most basic of cybersecurity protections in that they store the credit card info in the clear.

The fourth line in the record above is Farivar's (long-expired and changed) full credit card. While it may not seem like a huge surprise that the government is basically snooping on everything you tell the airlines (including seat changes, food preferences, any special assistance you might need, etc.), it's stunning that they're passing around and storing credit card info in the clear.

Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, said that my story raises a lot of questions about what the government is doing.

“Why isn’t the government complying with even the most basic cybersecurity standards?” Cate said. “Storing and transmitting credit card numbers without encryption has been found by the Federal Trade Commission to be so obviously dangerous as to be ‘unfair’ to the public. Why do transportation security officials not comply with even these most basic standards?”

Farivar also notes that the CBP publicly states that the info is kept for five years, but his own records go back to March of 2005 -- suggesting that the CBP is hanging onto all this info for a lot longer. Of course, as we've seen in the past, if there's one government agency that appears to be able to get away with anything with absolutely no oversight at all, it's Customs and Border Patrol. However, this seems like a fairly serious problem. Beyond the 4th Amendment questions it raises about why they're getting all this information on Americans, it seems like they're creating a much bigger security risk in storing (and passing around) all such info in the clear.

from the or-just-more-bizarre dept

I've been trying to travel less often these days, but I still do way too much of it. Over the past few years, though, I've become more and more obsessed with perfecting my "travel gear" so that I can do things conveniently on the go. This week's awesome stuff post covers three new crowdfunding projects that attempt (some better than others) to create products for travelers that... are quite different than what's come before. Whether or not you agree that any of these are particularly useful, they're the kinds of ideas that will certainly surprise people.

First up is the Aero-Tray -- a foldup stand mainly for laptops to actually make it easier/more convenient to work on airplanes. I'm often my most productive on airplanes, where I can just sit and focus for hours on end, but the cramped quarters and the fear of the person in front of you pushing their seat back (ugh!) can be quite a pain. The Aero-Tray looks like a pretty cool and unique way of trying to tackle that, while also making your "workspace" on a plane more usable. Of course, it doesn't just have to be for airplanes either. I see this as a possible replacement for the current travel laptop stand that I travel with already. They're also promoting this as a way to take a nap, though that looks kind of goofy. (Disclaimer: I've already backed this project myself, even though I'm a bit nervous about the weight and size of the thing -- but the possibility of being more productive on planes is really tempting).

The project was seeking $23,667 (I have no idea why they chose such an odd number), and passed that relatively quickly. It's a bit over $30,000 with less than a week to go.

Speaking of looking goofy during naps, last year, the really wacky "ostrich pillow" which let you stick your head into a giant pillow-like... thing in order to sleep damn well anywhere you please (if you can get over the embarrassment factor) got a ridiculous amount of attention, and ended up raising about $200,000 on Kickstarter. It looks like a gag gift, but apparently it's real. Either way, the folks behind it have now created the Ostrich Pillow Light. Honestly, if there had never been an Ostrich Pillow in the first place, I think most people would think the Ostrich Pillow Light looks insanely goofy. But, when you compare the two, the new Light one looks way less goofy. Thank goodness for relative goofiness. (Disclaimer: I wouldn't want to be caught dead in one of these, no matter how comfy they might be).

Once again, like last year's project, there appears to be a fair amount of demand for this offering. They had a goal of £25,000 and shot past it. As I write this, it's around £60,000, with more than two weeks to go.

Finally, the folks at Triposo, who make travel apps for mobile phones are offering a wacky travel belt. Basically, it's a belt that has little buzzers in four equally spaced places around the belt. You program into your mobile app where it is you want to go... and as you walk around some new city, it'll buzz you to tell you which way to go -- so you don't (1) look like a lost tourist and (2) miss all the sights while staring into the little map on your phone trying to figure out where to go. Conceptually, that's kind of neat. I'm one of those people who hates looking like a tourist somewhere, and almost always tries to memorize maps before heading out, rather than have to stand around looking lost (sometimes this works... sometimes... it doesn't). Still, the idea of a belt that guides you around still seems a bit far out there for me. (Disclaimer: I actually don't have a disclaimer on this one, but since I did one on the other two items, I felt the need to say something).

These guys are trying to get $10,000, and only have about $3,000 as of this writing, with about two and a half weeks to go. That's right on the edge in terms of likely hitting the goal. Wouldn't surprise me either way. Funky product, but might be a really niche market.

from the misrepresentation-may-be-an-issue dept

Late last week, a bunch of folks passed along an interesting blog post by David Gerard about a legal dispute between the company Internet Brands and the Wikimedia Foundation (the folks behind Wikipedia). By Gerard's account, Internet Brands -- a company that runs a bunch of content sites, including Wikitravel.org, which it bought in 2006 -- was suing some volunteer admins of the site for "forking" the content on that site and taking up with the Wikimedia Foundation to create a new travel wiki there. As noted, Wikitravel content has a CC-by-SA license (Creative Commons ShareAlike). In response to all of this, the Wikimedia Foundation took it upon itself to proactively file for declaratory judgment that creating a "fork" of Wikitravel is not breaking the law (confusing matters just slightly -- a bunch of former Wikitravel admins had already forked the content and created a separate site in 2006 called Wikivoyage, which is merging into this new travel wiki under the Wikimedia Foundation).

Now, let me be clear: I think that suing your volunteer admins is unbelievably stupid and shortsighted. It pretty much guarantees that it's going to be difficult to attract such help in the future. Similarly, some of Internet Brands' actions in trying to stop this new travel site seem at least somewhat questionable. But... in looking over the details of the initial lawsuit, it seems that Gerard and the Wikimedia Foundation (who I almost always agree with) are not telling the full story, and are being slightly misleading.

The actual lawsuit against the volunteer admins (and again, it's stupid to sue those admins) isn't because of the "forking." In fact, Internet Brands makes it clear in its own filing that the content is CC-by-SA and can be copied with attribution. Instead, the concerns are over how the admins presented themselves and their relationship to Wikitravel in convincing others to move over to the new project. Specifically, Internet Brands suggests that these admins implied that they were speaking for Wikitravel and the entire community there, by saying that the community was moving over to the new operation.

For example, on August 18, 2012, Holliday improperly and wrongfully emailed at least several hundred of Wikitravel members, purporting to be from Wikitravel and informing members that the Wikitravel Website was "migrating" to the Wikimedia Foundation.

This is Internet Brand's version of things, but you can see how their complaint might be a bit more legitimate if Holliday really suggested that it was Wikitravel itself that was "migrating." Of course, the text of the actual email (at least the text shown in the filing) suggests that Holliday didn't go quite that far -- though he was at least somewhat vague.

Specifically, Holliday's email contained the Subject Line, "Important information about Wikitravel!" and its body stated, "This email is being sent to you on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators since you have put some real time and effort into working on Wikitravel. We wanted to make sure you are up to date and in the loop concerning big changes to the community that will affect the future of your work! As you may already have heard, Wikitravel's community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation."

That's not quite as clear-cut as IB stated in the preceding paragraph. He doesn't claim to necessarily be "from Wikitravel." He notes that he's writing on behalf of "Wikitravel administrators," which is slightly different, since many of the administrators are volunteers, not employees or representatives of the site. That's part of what makes this tricky. Separately, he doesn't directly say that the entire Wikitravel website is migrating... but rather that the "Wikitravel community" is "looking to migrate." It's a subtle difference, and one could read the email in multiple ways. However, even in the interpretation that favors Holliday the most, you can certainly argue that he was unnecessarily vague, and at least implies that he's speaking for the site and the community as a whole, when he's really just speaking on behalf of some admins and some portion of the community.

Finally, IB also complains that even with the CC-by-SA license, the new site failed to provide proper attribution. This is always a bit tricky too, because people disagree over what constitutes proper attribution. But for all the people jumping immediately to Wikimedia's side in this dispute, it's worth noting that on this point, if you're a Creative Commons supporter, you might be interested in IB's argument, because if they're right here, it could provide ammo to others who seek to enforce any CC "attribution" license in situations where people don't attribute.

Nothing in the lawsuit really, directly, appears to be about the fact that these guys were creating a "fork" -- despite Wikimedia's claim about the legal fight. Now, you could argue that this is the true intention of the lawsuit -- that it's designed to intimidate these admins and try to throw a wrench into this competitive effort. But, at least on its face, the actual legal filings seem to have a bit more merit than Wikimedia's initial claims suggest. In the end, I (once again) think that Internet Brands is making a tactical (if not legal) mistake in suing, because it will likely tarnish the brand and may make it difficult to attract new admins. And, conceptually, I'm all for Wikimedia Foundation setting up a fork of Wikitravel and trying to do more, and create value that brings the community from Wikitravel over to the new site.

But the lawsuit is about these specific activities, in which the filing makes a reasonable argument that a few admins implied they spoke for Wikitravel (or for the wider community) when that was not necessarily the case. Either way, it'll be interesting to see what happens, but I hope that people read the details before automatically assuming the spin that's been making the rounds is entirely accurate. The claims that these admins are being sued for forking Creative Commons content appear to be simply incorrect.

Similarly, in my read of Wikimedia's lawsuit seeking default judgment, it seems like they may be going a bit too far. The filing tries to argue that Internet Brands is seeking to prevent the use of the content itself, but the actual filing does no such thing. Thus, it's possible that Wikimedia Foundation may run into some problems, if the court doesn't believe that an actual "controversy" is being presented here. For what it's worth, courts don't always look kindly at declaratory judgment cases if there's no real controversy, as they see them as a waste of time. While there is perhaps the germ of a controversy here, I could definitely see the court reading Wikimedia's filing and Internet Brands' actual lawsuits, and realizing that what Wikimedia describes is wholly different than what IB actually said in its lawsuit, and then just dumping the case.

from the innovation-tax dept

Hipmunk, if you're unfamiliar with it, is a wonderful travel search site, which really thought hard about how to make searching for flights and other travel info much more useful and intuitive. For me, personally, it's almost entirely replaced other sites like Expedia. A few weeks back the company announced on its blog that it had received $15 million in funding and also mentioned that it was doing okay in the revenue department. These days, that's both a sign for celebration... and blood in the water for patent trolls. I recently spoke to a lawyer for a decently large startup that isn't making any revenue, who has said that he's been contacted by patent trolls, who basically just keep circling, saying they won't sue until his company is making money, and then they'll pounce. It appears something similar happened with Hipmunk.

Just days after the announcement, a "company" (and I use that term loosely) called i2z contacted them, demanding they obtain a license, according to a report by Jeff Roberts. i2z is already suing a ton of travel/location companies, including Google, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Yelp and more in Delaware (while not as famous as Eastern Texas for patent lawsuits, Delaware has been getting some attention as a "favorable" venue for patent trolls). It has also sued Hotels.com in a separate action... in Texas (northern district, not eastern) and Microsoft in Oregon. Of course, i2z (like so many patent trolls) appears to just be a patent lawyer, based in California: Rakesh Ramde.

The patent in question (5,345,551) covers a "Method and system for synchronization of simultaneous displays of related data sources." It was originally issued all the way back in 1994 to Brigham Young University... who held onto it until just about a year ago when it was assigned to "Gregory Cuke" who appears to be a real estate guy in Longview, Texas. And, yes, it turns out that i2z, despite actually being a lawyer in California, is technically based in Longview, Texas. Ramde claimed that Hipmunk violated claim one of the patent, which reads (in its entirety):

1. A system for synchronizing the presentation of data on a digital computer display, comprising:

first and second window-controlling means, each of said window-controlling means displaying information in at least one display window,
a synchronization control means, and
means for communications between said synchronization control means and each of said first and second window-controlling means;
wherein said first window-controlling means displays first information from a first source, and said second window-controlling means displays second information from a second source;
wherein said first information and said second information have sections, and at least one section of said second information corresponds to a section of said first information;
wherein said first window-controlling means sends a message to said synchronization control means over said means for communications indicating a change in viewing position to a new section of said first information;
wherein said synchronization control means sends a message to said second window-controlling means over said means for communications requesting a change in viewing position to a section of said second information corresponding to said new section of said first information; and
wherein said second window-controlling means displays said corresponding section of said second information on at least one display window.

In response, rather than letting i2z shop for its favorite forum, Hipmunk went to court in Northern California, asking for a declaratory judgment saying that (1) Hipmunk does not infringe and (2) the patent isn't valid anyway. On that first point, it seems that Hipmunk has a reasonably strong argument, since the whole point of the claim seems to involve multiple windows, and Hipmunk displays everything in a single window.

Either way, this is the kind of crap that tons of companies face. The second they're deemed even slightly successful, they get hit with patent infringement claims from non-practicing entities, wielding broad and vague patents that have nothing to do with what the company is really doing. And people still don't think this is a problem?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The failure rate of space programs makes space travel a bit of a risky venture. Sitting on enough explosive materials to escape the Earth's gravity isn't the safest-sounding job, but there are still plenty of willing volunteers to try it. Here are just a few stories on some recent space missions.

That's because Expedia is a leading member of a lobbying group called FairSearch, which was set up mainly to protest Google's planned acquisition of ITA. Both sides on that fight have been bombarding me with press releases/articles on a near daily basis, all of which I've ignored, because it's a silly fight. However, considering that Expedia is one of the main members of the group, and one of the key points that the group is supposedly fighting for is protesting "search discrimination," the whole thing rings a little hypocritical. From the FairSearch website:

Yup. So, just as Expedia, in an attempt to complain about Google, claims it's against search providers discriminating by manipulating results to promote or punish certain players, it's doing so in a way that's significantly more noticeable than anything Google is doing. I agree with Eric Goldman that Expedia should be able to set up its search engine however it wants, even if it means making life worse off for customers by hiding certain results purely as retaliation to a company it doesn't like. There's choice in the marketplace, and this move means that I'm much less likely to use Expedia. But to complain about this exact form of discrimination, while doing it in a way that's much more noticeable than the one you're complaining about? That's pure, unadulterated hypocrisy. Way to go Expedia.

All that said, I'm a bit confused about this entire dispute. What's to stop Orbitz from simply getting American Airlines fares from wherever it wants to get them and including them? The data is factual data, not subject to American Airlines' control, so I don't even see how AA can legally stop Orbitz from including it. The real issue, it seems, is that AA wants Orbitz and others to get their data directly, rather than via middlemen, but the way to do that is to make it easy for the travel search engines to do that in a way that's more convenient and cheaper than getting it through any middlemen. Not sure why that requires a legal dispute...

from the trendwatching dept

For many, many years, there's been talk about how business travel was living on borrowed time, because it was going to be replaced by things like videoconferencing that offered the same benefits at a cheaper price and with less hassle. But every time this sort of boom is predicted, it fails to materialize. After 9/11, video and web conferencing took off for about three months when travel dropped, but then use fell right back down. Several months ago, more such predictions were made with oil prices driving the cost of business travel through the roof, and now, the motivation is apparently the drive to cut costs. For instance, Cisco's CEO John Chambers says that by using the company's own communications technology, it's been able to slice its per-employee travel spending by more than half, and that it won't increase again, even after the recession. Of course, as the NYT notes, Chambers is making a look-how-we-eat-our-own-dog-food sales pitch. But it's worth wondering if a prolonged recession could finally give these travel-replacement technologies the boost they've long been looking for, and supplant business travel, rather than just add to it, as they have largely done thus far.

from the it's-not-that-hard,-really dept

Intel is famous for being overly aggressive in trying to enforce its trademark, often claiming rights over almost any use of the prefix "intel" to anyone using the phrase "something inside," even if it's completely unrelated to the business that Intel is in. Trademark, of course, is not intended to give a company "ownership" of a word or phrase. Instead, it's a consumer protection system, designed to prevent consumers from being tricked into believing that they're buying a good from one company instead of another. That's why trademarks are only applicable in the business area that the company is using the mark. Thus, Johnny's Soda doesn't interfere with a trademark on Johnny's Dry Cleaning -- because they're totally separate businesses. That's also why we have the moron in a hurry test. If a "moron in a hurry" is unlikely to be confused by the use of the mark, then there's no trademark infringement.

Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped Intel from trying. Over the years they've gone after a maker of jeans (Intel Jeans), a marketing firm (for using the term INTELMARK for one of its products) and an artist's cooperative for using the name "Art Inside") among various other cases over the years. Its latest is to go after a travel agency called Intellife Travel that books trips between the US and China. The travel agency clearly explained to Intel that unless Intel's trademark covered the travel business, there was unlikely to be any infringement. Intel took a year to think about it... and then filed a lawsuit. Hopefully, Intel gets smacked down quickly on this clear abuse of trademark law.